


Let’s Pretend This Never Happened

by Ladytalon



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Brothers, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Graphic Description, Mad Science, Medical Experimentation, Sibling Bonding, Surgery, Worry, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22805719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladytalon/pseuds/Ladytalon
Summary: Zed is left to pick up the pieces once again and try to save Ned’s life now that INAC has been defeated and the Robolution is no more.
Kudos: 7





	Let’s Pretend This Never Happened

It’s just like last time, Zed thinks despairingly as he runs through the factory ruins in search of his brother. What _is_ it about Ned and these damned Vault Hunters? He always seems to plant his dumb ass in their way and then Zed has to come in to save him.

Zed rounds the corner, nearly tripping over the boxy remains of a CL4P-TP unit in his haste. If Ned has finally managed to turn himself into a corpse that Zed can’t revive, Zed’s going to kill him.

There are dead bandits and hollowed out steward bots strewn all over the place and Zed’s heart is pounding wildly at the thought that he’s too late. He can’t see Ned anywhere even though he knows he _has_ to be close, and Zed turns in a tight circle as he scans the bodies frantically - _there_. The only thing visible from where Zed is standing is a well-worn boot, but it’s nearly identical to the pair on his own feet; one of the last gifts their father had ever given them. 

He lurches forward, throwing his bag on the ground beside the dumpster where Ned is sprawled. “Ned? You’d better be still alive, you jackwad,” Zed hisses, dropping to his knees and reaching out to feel for a pulse. It’s weak - _very_ weak - but it’s there, and Zed nearly sobs with relief. “So fuckin’ _stupid_. You stupid piece of _shit_.”

Ned looks like a science experiment gone wrong – he’s got circuitry embedded in his skin, and the top of his head is just… _gone_. It’s a small mercy that there’s some sort of clear glass dome protecting the exposed brain, and if Ned were conscious Zed would have a few jokes to make about finally having proof that Ned actually has a brain. Zed struggles out of his apron and tucks it beneath his brother’s head, then uncaps an InstaHealth and slides the needle into Ned’s jugular vein. Even if he used all the needles he’s brought along it wouldn’t be enough for what ails Ned, but it’s a good place to start.

He’s also wearing that stupid fake moustache.

What he really needs is to get Ned back to one of their infirmaries – any of them would do, but he’s guessing that Ned’s homebase in Hallows End will be his best bet. There’s no possibly way he can move Ned there by himself and he certainly can’t enlist the aid of the Vault Hunters, because they’ve killed Ned _twice_ now. It’s a long shot, but the only thing Zed can do now is to call either Ernest Whitting or Hudson Johns.

He sends off an ECHO message to both of them, and busies himself with getting Ned stable enough to move. His brother still hasn’t regained consciousness, which can only be a good thing with him missing half of his skull. Zed eases the bloodstained, bullet-riddled smock from Ned’s body and is wrapping it around the clear brain case when he hears footsteps (and voices) approaching. “Over here,” Zed calls out, making sure Ned’s most obvious injury is hidden from view before the other men see it.

“Jesus Christ,” Ernest says, walking up with Hudson trailing just behind him. “What’d he get himself into this time?”

“You don’t even wanna know,” Zed sighs. “Thanks for comin’, Ernest. Hudson.”

“Of course,” Hudson says quietly. “What do you need?”

Zed explains and, to their credit, neither of them go running for the hills when they find they’re expected to walk right through Jakobs Cove carrying Ned’s unconscious body. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but…he’s all I got left.”

“We’ve been through a lot, growin’ up together,” Ernest says thoughtfully. “It’s the least I could do.”

Hudson just nods. “Glad to help, Zed.”

Between the three of them, they manage to get Ned onto a flat piece of signage and down to the Fast Travel. It’s a long and harrowing walk from the docks of Jakobs Cove to Hallows End, and Zed figures he’s strained their friendship as far as it will go, but they make it to Ned’s damned treehouse. He offers to let them stay the night while he gets Ned taken care of, with the promise of an armed escort back to the docks in the morning, but they turn him down. Zed can’t blame them – he’d rather not be here, either.

Ernest thumps Zed’s shoulder in a casual farewell, and Hudson opts for grasping Zed’s forearm with a shy invitation to the Middle of Nowhere. “Sure thing, Hud. Take it easy, both of y’all – those four winnowed out the ranks ‘round here but…”

“Don’t gotta tell us twice; that’s some freaky shit Ned’s been into,” Ernest says with a laugh, but his face grows somber when he quickly remembers why he’s there. “He’s gonna make it, right?”

Zed forces a smile. “He always does, don’t he?”

“Well…send an ECHO, either way. Good seein’ you again, Zed.”

They say their goodbyes and then Zed is left with his brother still laid out in the other room. The house itself is a huge, slowly decaying relic - so they have that in common, at least. Zed shivers and rubs his arms, wondering what Ned was thinking when he moved here – it’s far too cold and damp for Zed’s taste. 

He goes in to see what he can do about Ned’s…condition. Obviously, the whole ‘exposed brain’ thing is one of the biggest problems; Zed’s going to have to figure out how to reconstruct Ned’s skull when he has absolutely nothing to work with. Zed paces the room, nearly wearing grooves in the carpet until he realizes that all he has to do is to make a mock-up and then the New-U will do the rest of the work for him. 

Hopefully.

He thinks about it as he wheels the gurney into the house’s massive operating theater, and pulls on a mask and some gloves. Zed goes about the business of fishing around for the bullets still buried in his brother’s flesh, and soon has a blood-smeared metal tray full of shrapnel. Ned’s pulse is still sluggish, worryingly so, and he still shows no signs of waking. Well, that can be a good thing – and in this case, it’s a mercy. “You better hang on,” Zed says severely. “No dyin’ unless I say so.” He bandages Ned’s wounds lightly and finds a blanket to cover him with.

After making sure that Ned is more or less comfortable, Zed searches the ECHOnet for the relevant information. It’s a long shot, but his idea just might work – as long as he shores up the existing parts of his brother’s skull, the regeneration station can be tricked into thinking that Ned’s head is still intact and should recreate the whole thing when the digistruct process is complete. Not for the first time, he wishes that Ted was still on Pandora; Zed’s sure _he_ would know what to do.

There are numerous skulls gracing windowsills and work tables, but something tells Zed that he won’t be able to use them due to their age. If he wants to ‘replace’ the bone missing from his triplet’s head, he’s going to have to go out into the bayou and bring back at least two zombies…not that they have actual _living_ tissue, but it’s as close as he’s going to get out here.

The hand-cranked elevator is a son of a bitch to operate and Zed’s muscles are burning by the time he gets it back down to the ground. He doesn’t have time to plan out a trap that’s anything more sophisticated than a basic noose on the ground; he doesn’t even have the time to plan _that_ and he sure as hell doesn’t have any rope. Ned’s barely hanging on as it is – Zed’s simply going to have to run up to the nearest zombie and tackle the bastard.

He casts about for something that can help him, and settles on some of the rocks and branches that are scattered around the place. Zed works quickly, piling up as much as he can and trying not to think of how damned _stupid_ this is. If anyone would have told him just six months ago that he would be out here trying to trip a zombie so he could steal its brain to save Ned’s life… “ _Stupid_ ,” Zed hisses to himself. What has he ever done to deserve this?

The truly stupid part, he thinks not even five minutes later, is that his plan is actually working. He’d managed to catch _ten_ of the bastards and now here he is dragging two of them off by their heels. It’s slow going since Zed has to drag one a few feet (no pun intended), drop it, and go back to pull the other one after him – whichever one he’s dropped always tries to crawl away, but they never get very far on account of being fucking idiots. He’s gathered an audience, too, but they’re even slower than he is so it’s nothing to be _really_ concerned about. Zed could do without all the heavy breathing and wet gargling noises they’re making as they follow along, though.

There’s a bit of trouble when one half of Zed’s zombie cargo gets its torso caught on a branch and its feet just…pop right off when Zed tugs a bit too hard, but he’s in the home stretch and doesn’t have time to throw up about it. All he can do is just toss the feet to the side, grab up the disgustingly mushy stumps, and continue on his way. His zombie followers practically dive on the discarded feet like flies on a skag pile, which is all kinds of wrong.

He gets both of the things into the cage and slams the door down, then lifts it up again so that he can quickly wipe his palms onto the dying grass. “Your ass better be alive when I get back up there,” Zed yells up towards the house, reaching for the hand crank. The elevator rises in fits and starts because he’s trapped in a cage with two things who would dearly love to have him for breakfast, and he needs to pause now and again to pull them onto the far side. 

Getting them into the house is a tricky business, because both of them seem to want to blunder over near the edge, but he finally manages to lock them into a room. Zed pauses to press the back of his hand over his mouth as his stomach lurches violently, only continuing on towards Ned when he’s reasonably sure he’s not about to ralph all over the hallway.

Ned is deathly pale under the bandages, his breathing worryingly slow, and Zed knows that he won’t get a second chance if he messes this up. He’s got to get this done, and fast. “Stay with me, okay? I’ll be right back, I swear.”

He props the door open and takes another gurney back down the hall at a run, opening the door to find that the two zombies he’d left are crawling around the place while one of them is slobbering over the other one’s stumps. Zed really does vomit this time because his stomach just can’t take it. He hauls them both up onto the gurney, strapping them in and running them back to the operating room. Ned’s still breathing when he checks.

After quickly scrubbing in the sink and sticking his head under the faucet to gargle some water, Zed pulls on the only surgical apron hanging on the pegs and ties a mask around his nose and mouth. “Here we go. _Fuck_.”

Zed doesn’t have time to shave anyone’s head – he also doesn’t even have a razor, so he makes do with a pair of shears and a fervent hope that the zombie whose skull he’s borrowing wasn’t a blond. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to slice a chunk of skull off of someone/thing that’s still moving, and he screws up a few times, but whatever’s made them into zombies has also made the bones porous. Zed counts himself lucky that he hadn’t accidentally mashed in their heads while he’d been dragging them up here.

He ends up with more skull pieces than he really needs, but that turns out to be a good thing. Zed wheels the zombies into an adjoining room so that he doesn’t have to listen to them gargle and belch throughout the entire surgery, and gets to work. Carving the extra bone and matching it up with the base of Ned’s skull, Zed slowly reconstructs something resembling his brother’s head by frequently checking a mirror to make sure it matches. He has a pounding headache by the time he’s finished coating the seams with surgical glue, but Zed knows that he’s nowhere close to done yet. 

Finding another scalpel, he sanitizes it and sets the point on his left forearm. This is… _not_ going to be fun, and he casts a quick glance over at his brother before gritting his teeth and beginning to cut. Zed forces his right hand to keep going when the pain makes his eyes water; Ned is going to _owe_ him for this. Inch by agonizing inch, Zed slices the top layer of skin off of his arm and peels it away. 

Zed’s arm feels like it’s on fire as he reaches out to press the oozing scrap of his own flesh atop Ned’s reconstructed skull. Blood is steadily flowing down his arm to pool in his glove and he should step away and wash his hands again, but he figures it couldn’t hurt to make sure Ned’s got as much shared DNA as possible before Ned’s life is put in the metaphorical hands of the New-U system. Angling his arm across his brother’s head, Zed pulls the glove off and lets his blood drip across the grisly patchwork. There should be enough there to counteract whatever effect the salvaged bone might have, but Zed carefully wipes his own blood along the makeshift skull before stepping back.

Ned looks awful. Zed isn’t sure what’s worse – waiting for his brother to die, or needing to kill Ned himself. He knows that Ned wouldn’t want him to draw it out like this, wouldn’t want to lie here while his body slowly failed to keep him alive…but what if this was all for nothing? What if Zed gave him the mercy blow and the New-U didn’t take him?

 _Fuck_ , his arm hurts.

He wrestles with his dilemma for several more minutes, during which time Ned just looks worse and worse. Zed finally has to admit that he can’t leave Ned like this, not when there’s a chance that Ned can be revived. “You better come back t’me, you dumbass,” Zed tells his brother. “You’re all I got left.” He can’t believe he’s really doing this.

Zed wraps a bandage around his forearm, wincing as the cotton pad drags against the raw flesh, and ties it quickly before opening one of the drawers to pull out a few InstaHealths. One of them gets set aside, and two others go into his back pocket. He crosses to the window that looks off to the east, trying to mentally calculate the distance. It’d be easier if he had a straight shot to the New-U, but he’ll have to cross the outer yard and go across the covered bridge in order to reach it…and he’ll have to pray that none of the zombies notice that Ned’s out there, assuming his plan works. Ned has a weapons locker in the back of the clinic downstairs so Zed will need a few extra seconds to reach that, too.

It’s finally time to actually do what he’s been dreading, because Zed really can’t put it off any longer. His hands are shaking as he walks up to the gurney he’d used as a makeshift operating table. “I hate this,” he says aloud, staring up at the ceiling. “I fuckin’ _hate_ it.” Taking a deep breath and blinking away the tears that are burning his eyes, Zed moves his right hand to cover Ned’s mouth and nose. His brother is so weakened by all that’s been done to him that his body doesn’t even fight… Ned just gives up, and Zed has to stand there and wait until his heart stops. 

When it’s over and Ned’s body is clearly not going anywhere, the tremble in Zed’s hands spreads until it’s all he can do to remain upright. He stops trying. Zed leans over Ned, resting his forehead on Ned’s chest and wishing he were anywhere else right now. Why had he thought he could fix this? Why hadn’t it _worked?_ He can’t believe that he’s the only one left, but what had he really expected? _Oh, Ned_ , Zed thinks, despair rising up to catch him in a stranglehold. _I am so, so sorry._ Ned was supposed to have been _safe_ here.

A buzzing sound in his ears makes Zed jerk upright just before his face hits the empty blankets where Ned’s body has just been. “Oh, my god,” he blurts out, staring at the gurney in shock before wheeling back towards the window to look. Maybe it’s because Ned’s body’s been corrupted with…whatever…that it’s taken so long, or maybe it’s because nobody’s actually been maintaining the equipment…but the beacon’s lit up and Zed can clearly see the system starting to digistruct Ned back into existence.

Why is he still standing here like an idiot? He needs to _go_.

Zed nearly trips over the gurney as he runs for the door, barking his shins painfully on something else in the hall. The cost to his knees can be measured later, he decides as he simply jumps down to the next landing. Okay, what else…? _Guns_. Skidding into the clinic area, Zed grabs up the closest firearms and vaults the desk. “Come _on_ ,” he roars at the pulley mechanism of the cage elevator when it gets stuck. 

He makes it down to the ground and bursts out of the courtyard, surprising a gaggle of undead on his way past. _Please be okay, **please** be okay_, Zed thinks feverishly. He doesn’t think he’s run this fast in his entire life. 

Some of the zombies, attracted by the New-U’s activation, are closing in on their newfound prey as Zed rounds the bend. He tosses one of the guns to the ground and swings the other up, firing at the closest shuffler so that its head explodes into rotten confetti. “You all right, dude?” He yells, going after the next one. “ _Ned!_ ”

“Suh…somethin’ ain’t…ain’t right,” Ned says. From the corner of his eye, Zed can see him stagger to his feet. 

“Hang on, I’ll get you back up there,” Zed promises, aiming the shotgun at another zombie who seems set on having his kneecaps for dinner. Clearing out the closest ones, Zed pauses to check the ammo and sees that he only has a few shells left. The other weapon he’d thrown into the grass is a high-powered revolver and Zed figures that if he aims carefully enough, it should get them back up to the treehouse with not _too_ much trouble. The syringes he’d stuck in his pocket are nowhere to be found, which means he’d dropped them on his way out here. There’s a slight break in the oncoming crowd, so Zed ducks underneath Ned’s arm and helps him up. Something really _isn’t_ right with his brother – he’s paler than the corpses currently shambling their way, and the tremors running through Ned’s body are concerning…to say the least. “Let’s get movin’.”

His plan works perfectly, up to the point where he’s helping Ned across the bridge and one of the zombies starts lurching towards them a lot faster than he’s prepared for. It pauses to vomit a stream of something disgusting and Zed yanks Ned back out of the way. “The _fuck_ is that?” he demands.

“Spewer,” Ned gasps, the arm across Zed’s shoulders tightening convulsively. 

“Beautiful.” Zed thumbs back the hammer and takes careful aim, waiting for the bastard to circle back around. It shambles to a halt, and Zed shoots it just as it starts to rear back; the bullet gets it in the throat and knocks it down, so he tries his best to hustle Ned past it before the damned thing tries to crawl after them. “Almost there…!”

They get inside the main gates of the courtyard when Ned’s legs abruptly give out, and Zed isn’t prepared to catch him. They both go sprawling in the withered grass and with the crowd still following them hopefully, this is about the worst thing that could happen aside from one of them actually catching up. Zed rolls to one side and scrambles to his feet, frantically grabbing at Ned and pulling him to the cage. He pulls down the door just as the first zombie ambles up and tries its luck at gumming the metal bars.

Zed collapses on the scarred metal platform, rolling his head towards Ned who _really_ doesn’t look that great…but he _is_ alive. “How we doin’?”

“I been better,” Ned groans as another seizure hits him.

“You been _dead_ , you idiot.” Zed rubs a hand over his face and forces himself to sit up, then to stand – the burst of adrenaline that had enabled him to get down here and save Ned is swiftly beginning its decline, and he needs to get both of them up to the house before it’s completely gone. 

He’s exhausted by the time he gets the cage back up to the top, and pretty sure that Ned weighs three times more than when he died, but they stagger into the house. Neither of them have the strength to get atop any of the gurneys that have been pushed alongside the far wall, so they settle for dragging the pads off onto the floor. Ned sprawls across one while Zed jimmies the lock on the med vendor and grabs the remaining syringes. They’ll need to get him back upstairs so that Zed can figure out what’s really going on with him, but a few InstaHealths will go a long way towards putting him right. Hopefully.

Zed injects his brother with the contents of two syringes before using one for himself, then he flops down on the thin padding salvaged from the gurney. “It has been a _day_ , I am tellin’ you,” he sighs, rolling onto his back. Despite the energy flowing through him thanks to the healing medicine, Zed feels completely wiped. “That shit workin’ yet?”

Ned makes an unidentifiable sound, and passes out. Zed’s not too far behind him.

When he wakes up, his back immediately lets him know that he’s too old to be taking a nap on the floor. His arm feels a lot better, though, and so do his knees. Zed sits up with a groan, rubbing a hand over his face and looking at Ned. “You up yet?”

Ned shifts slightly. “Nope.”

“Need t’get you upstairs,” Zed says, wincing as he attempts to climb to his feet. “Remember anything?”

“Kinda? Look, I can’t move.” The words are slightly slurred, like Ned’s drunk or something.

“What?” Zed moves over to his brother to find that Ned’s limbs have all locked in place somehow. “See if you can’t relax, maybe it’s the muscles-”

Ned’s eyes roll up to look at him. “ _You_ try to relax like this. I can hardly move and my head is fuckin’ _killing_ me,” he says through clenched teeth because his jaw’s shut tight, too. Zed wouldn’t mind being able to duplicate _that_ little side effect.

Well, that makes sense – most of Ned’s head doesn’t even belong to him. Zed will save _that_ particular story for another time. “I hear that. Uh…I can probably drag you up there, but it ain’t gonna be a fun trip for either of us. If you could help even a little, we might-could get you there faster,” Zed tells him, kneeling down and checking Ned’s vitals. Heart rate is elevated, which makes sense under the shitty circumstances, and he’s willing to bet Ned’s blood pressure is off the charts, but his color looks good and Ned’s definitely responsive. “Let’s try it,” he decides.

Ned grunts. “Fuck.”

Zed couldn’t agree more because when he tries to lift Ned to his feet it’s like he’s carting a mining bin of processed eridium. “What the hell d’yall _eat_ out here in Jakobs Cove? _Damn!_ ” If he could move, Zed’s sure that Ned would be flipping him the rakk right about now.

Between them, but mostly Zed, they get up to the operating theater and Ned is hauled up onto the table through sheer determination and a lot of swearing. Ned’s muscles are slowly unlocking and Zed has no doubts that it’s as painful as it looks; he busies himself by checking Ned’s vitals again and carefully probing Ned’s skull with his fingers. Everything seems to be sealed together just fine, so the residual headache is probably due to Ned’s body trying to get used to being whole again – he’s heard that some people need an adjustment period after being put through the regen system, especially the first time.

The seizures are another issue altogether, and it’s clear that they’re just getting worse, but Zed will be damned if he can figure out why they keep happening.

Zed’s checking him over and taking his pulse yet again when he finally figures it out – the subtly glowing circuitry embedded in Ned’s skin flashes directly underneath Zed’s hand, and Ned’s fingers immediately curl inwards toward his palm. “You feel that, just now?” he asks, leaning in close and studying the faint pulse of white light around Ned’s knuckles.

His brother sighs shakily. “I’m feelin’ every damned thing. Be more specific.”

“Your hand, it…it lit up,” Zed says, placing a finger over the glow. “Whatever this crap _is_ inside you, I think it’s misfiring. Looks like it’s in so deep, the New-U counted it as part of you so that’s why it’s still there.” Sitting back, Zed looks Ned over critically and reaches out to pull up the hem of his brother’s shirt – sure enough, he can see circuitry spaced unevenly over Ned’s ribs and stomach. It even looks like it’s running down into his pants, which means… “Aw, hell. Ned, this’s gotta come out. _All_ of it.”

Ned looks over at him, and down to where Zed is staring. “Hang the fuck on – you tellin’ me…?”

“Ten bars of eridium says you got robo-dick.”

“No. No _way_ am I gonna let-” Ned breaks off with a grimace of pain as his back arches involuntarily. “Oh, fuck _me_ , that _hurts_.”

Zed reaches out to clasp his brother’s forearm tightly. “We’ll get you through this. Somehow. Let me just get some stuff together and I can knock you out ‘til it’s all over – sound good?”

Ned draws in a breath that sounds like he’s got half of Sanctuary perched atop his lungs. “It’d sound better if I actually had anesthetic.” Zed stares at him in disbelief that quickly turns to horror when Ned seizes up again. “Gettin’ hard to breathe. Just dig out much as you can.”

“I can’t operate on someone who’s awake,” Zed protests, but it doesn’t look like he has much choice in the matter. “There was that thing with the zombies, sure, but they ain’t _people_.” He paces back and forth worriedly, wondering how he’s going to play this – if he leaves Ned here to go back to one of his clinics, there’s no guarantee that Ned won’t just die on him again. “Shit. Um…okay, you’re…gonna want to get really, _really_ drunk for this.”

Ned points Zed towards his stash, and Zed brings back two full cases of what looks like bladeflower ‘shine. He cracks a bottle open and passes it over immediately, then gathers up the rest of the necessities – several scalpels and a small mountain of Anshin’s finest. “Go anywhere near my dick an’ I’ll bust this across your head,” Ned wheezes at him.

“You can barely even talk, so go ahead and imagine how scared I am right now,” Zed says. “That’ll be the last stop, anyhow.”

Zed helps his brother get undressed and pulling on a fresh pair of gloves, leans in to get to work. The circuitry on Ned’s torso is the first to go, and he winces in sympathy as Ned pounds on the side of the table and yells. This is the worst job he’s ever had to do, which is saying something, and he hates every minute of it. Ned is trying his best to stay still and get as drunk as possible while Zed slices down into his skin deep enough to reach the circuitry, _then_ scrapes it out.

He can’t believe there’s so _much_ of it.

Ned drifts in and out of consciousness while Zed works, alternating cutting with wiping away blood and injecting small amounts of healing medicine to help the wounds heal. It takes Zed three hours just to finish surgery on Ned’s chest and back, and another five for both legs and feet. He’s headed into hour ten as he pulls out the last piece from Ned’s left index finger. 

Zed looks down at his sole remaining brother, and he can’t remember when he’d last felt so damned tired. “Ned,” he says wearily, using his forearm to brush his hair back off of his forehead. “You still with me? It’s time, man. Only one section left.”

“Gotta…gotta be… _nuh-uh_ ,” Ned slurs.

“I don’t wanna do this any more’n you want me to,” Zed tells him, feeling like crossing his own legs at the thought of what he’s about to do. 

The first incision nearly gets him kicked in the head and he makes the executive decision to tie Ned’s legs down. “Jus’… _kill_ me,” Ned moans through the haze of alcohol. Zed’s not sure how he can even talk with all the booze he’s already sucked down. He supposes that it’s a good thing InstaHealths can be used to combat alcohol poisoning, because Ned’s liver isn’t long for this world.

Drunk off his ass or not, Zed has to admire a man who can still fire off a mean left hook while his dick’s getting filleted by a scalpel. He learns some interesting new curses in the intervals where Ned _isn’t_ begging for death, which is the only thing that keeps his skin from crawling clean off of his body. Zed barely manages to conquer his first ever bout of surgical squeamishness, and then he’s finally drawing out the last piece of circuitry. Ned’s too weak to do anything but give a lackluster snarl when Zed sticks a needle into his groin, then gets him in the arm with the last one. 

Zed drapes a blanket over Ned’s lap to spare himself the further sight of it and staggers to the nearest chair where he collapses. “If I left any in there, you can dig it out your damn self,” he says, leaning his head back to close his eyes. “You got any food in this dump?”

“I just drank a case of it,” Ned mumbles.

They fall asleep again, and Zed wakes up a handful of hours later with a crick in his neck because he was too stupid to stretch out on the gurney that’s beside the wall. He rubs his hands over his face and yawns, wondering if he should bother with an InstaHealth; it’s probably best to leave them for Ned, and he’s pretty sure that Ned still has some traditional medicine locked up around here somewhere.

A quick look at his brother shows that Ned is still sleeping, so Zed goes off in search of an analgesic. He finds some pills at the back of a cabinet and washes his face and hands in the bathroom sink to help wake himself up. Zed digs through the refrigerator in the kitchen, but isn’t willing to risk eating anything that might not be food – he can wait until Ned wakes up. 

Ned’s color looks decent and his vitals are good, though he still looks like death warmed over. Zed gently checks the incisions on Ned’s arms, noting that there doesn’t seem to be any signs of infection although he’s pretty sure that Ned will carry the scars from his misadventure for the rest of his life. The circuits were simply buried too deep for Ned to escape without a mark. Zed’s eyes drift to the area just below Ned’s waist and he feels like crossing his legs again.

He’s trying to place another blanket on top of Ned when his brother wakes up, blinking at him in confusion. “Zed? What’re you..?” Ned’s face changes as his memory catches up to him. “It’s all out, right? Tell me you got all that crap.”

“I could swear I got it all. D’you feel like I missed some?” Zed runs his eyes over the exposed parts of Ned’s body, but it’s difficult to see anything through the dull red smears of dried blood.

Ned shakes his head. “I got no idea right now; every single part of me is sore.”

“Well, you look like hell – so first order of business’s gonna be a bath or whatever,” Zed says, looking around the room thoughtfully. “This place needs cleanin’ too, but that can wait ‘til we get some food.” He stands at Ned’s side and helps him off of the table – the blanket needs to be peeled away from where it’s stuck to the crusts of Ned’s scars. 

Zed maneuvers him down the hall into the shower and helps Ned stay upright, immediately getting soap in his eyes for his troubles. Ned is trembling with fatigue just from the effort of washing himself so Zed simply takes the cloth from Ned’s shaking hands and does it himself. “Tilt your head back…that’s it,” he murmurs, gently working the shampoo into his brother’s hair and probing the scalp for any signs that the bone hasn’t knitted together properly. It seems fine, but he supposes that there’s time enough to be sure of that. “Thought I’d lost you for good this time. You have _got_ to start takin’ more care with your life. C’mon, now, let’s get you some clothes – I need some, too.”

Ned stays uncharacteristically silent as Zed turns off the water, wraps a towel around him, and guides him up the last set of stairs up into the house’s cupola. “I’m sorry,” Ned finally says as Zed’s carefully patting him dry.

“Yeah, well. Wasn’t your fault…or was it? Careful there,” Zed tells him.

“Not this time.”

Zed sits down next to him on the bed. “What the hell _happened_ to you?”

“All I remember was, I was in Dividing Faults for that vendor an’ there was this weird statue of a Claptrap down below the platform. I went down there to have a look, and then suddenly I was in…like, a dumpster or somethin’. Those Vault Hunters what offed me the first time were there _again_ and that didn’t go well this time, either.”

“I guess you just got the kinda face that makes folks wanna shoot you,” Zed says wryly. “Let’s get some clothes on your ass so we can get back down there, raid the fridge – what’ve you got in there? I was kinda scared to touch anything.”

His stomach is growling loud enough to wake the dead by the time they get Ned dressed – Zed just grabs an armful of clothing to look through later – and down into the kitchen. It turns out that everything in the refrigerator is actually food, since this is pretty much the only sanitary measures Ned actually adheres to. Piling the containers on the table, Zed grabs two forks and slides one of them over to Ned before digging in.

Ned starts out slow, still weakened by the blood loss and the shock of reconstruction, but eating something proves to be part of the cure for what ails him – time and a hefty amount of sleep will do the rest. 

Once Zed’s got something in his stomach, he digs through the pile of clothing he’d dumped on the floor and picks out a few items for after his shower. He quickly undresses and pulls on a clean pair of pants, then comes back to grab another container. Ned is steadily working through his own pile of food, and looks up. “I owe ya one.”

“You owe me several,” Zed replies, reaching over to clasp Ned’s shoulder to give him a shake. “Scared the life outta me, you jackass. Why can’t your midlife crisis just be orderin’ too many things from the ECHOnet like everybody else?”

“I’ll do that next time.”

They polish off most of the food before Ned starts to fall asleep right there at the table, so Zed puts what’s left back in the fridge and helps Ned into one of the adjacent rooms with a bed in it. He does a quick walkthrough of the house before finally getting his shower, staying in there until the hot water starts to run out.

Zed’s exhausted in almost every sense of the word but despite bed calling his name very, _very_ loudly, he has a promise to keep. Ernest picks up almost immediately. “ _Hey, man. How’d it go?_ ”

“I might still decide to kill him for all he puts me through but he’s alive for now,” Zed says. “It was a close thing. Wanna thank you boys again for the help.”

His friend assures him that it was nothing. “ _Either of you’d help us out, and I know that’s a fact. He really gonna be okay, Zed?”_

“He took some knocks, but he’ll be fine once he gets some rest. Y’all get back without too much fuss?”

Ernest laughs. “ _Yeah, we made it fine – thought for sure that poor old Hudson was gonna crap himself a few times, though! There was this Goliath chasing us through to Jakobs Cove with some kinda barrel…that was something.”_

“A barrel?” Zed shakes his head. “When Ned’s around, it sure as hell ain’t boring.” They talk a bit more and Zed is reminded of his promise to come visit before Ernest signs off because he’s just spotted an animal he wants to shoot. After checking in on Ned one last time, Zed finds another room and climbs into the bed with all of his clothes on.

He’s feeling a lot better by the time Ned walks into the room twelve hours later and nudges him awake. “Zed.”

Zed rubs at his eyes with a yawn, blinking up at his brother. “Huh?”

“Why the fuck are there two zombies tryin’ to eat each other’s brains in my second-best laboratory?”

Uh-oh. “Zombies?” Zed asks. “In _your_ second-best-”

“ _Yeah_. How’d they even get in there? And what the hell happened to their _heads?_ ”

This is, Zed decides, a conversation for which he’ll need a lot more sleep – and maybe even some alcohol – to get through. Maybe even a long stretch of level ground, so that he can get a head start before Ned starts chasing after him once he finds out that Zed reconstructed his skull using zombie bones. He grabs the blanket and yanks it back up, rolling over to indicate that this conversation is at an end. “Don’t worry about it.”


End file.
